GLAAD co-chair: Few groups are at greater risk than transgender citizens

Jennifer Finney Boylan, co-chair of American LGBT media advocacy group GLAAD, has spoken about the importance of transgender rights as the heart of the civil rights movement.

She told CBS News this week: “There are few groups in America at greater risk than its transgender citizens.”

She was speaking as part of CBS’s “Voices of the Civil Rights Movement” project, which asks key figures in the arts, business and politics about recent past or present civil rights activism.

She continued: “Seventy-eight percent of us report harassment as students at primary or secondary schools; a fifth of us report harassment by the police; and 41 percent of us have attempted to take our own lives.

“And yet instead of embracing these precious, endangered souls, some people, in speaking of us, focus on bathrooms and operations and sequins. They fight for their right to call us by names which we consider slurs. They think of us as marginal, as entertainers or aberrations, rather than as fellow citizens seeking dignity and respect.”

Other figures interviewed include: the widow of John Lennon, artist Yoko Ono; former NFL player and vocal supporter of same-sex marriage Chris Kluwe; and transgender surgery pioneer Dr Marci Bowers, who said that the transgender movement “is the last wave of the human rights campaign around the world”.